Python, Raspberry Pi, and Red Hat to name a few.

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What is the meaning of "life"?
Well, it's the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from
inorganic matter, of course. So, what is the meaning of "open source
life"? Leo Babauta, writing for LifeHack, says:

"It can apply to anything in life, any area where
information is currently in the hands of few instead of many, any area
where a few people control the production and distribution and
improvement of a product or service or entity."

Phew! Now that we have that figured out, what is the meaning of "Kubernetes"? Or, "Arduino"?
Like many well-known brand names we take for granted, such as
"Kleenex" or "Pepsi," the open source world has its own unique
collection of strange names that meant something to someone at some
time, but that we simply accept (or mispronounce) without knowing their
true origins.Let's take a look at the etymology of 11 such open source names.

Arduino

"So, two open source developers walk into a bar..." Arduino
derives its name from one of co-founder Massimo Banzi's favorite bars
in Ivrea, Italy, where the founders of this "hardware and software
ecosystem" used to meet. The bar was named for Arduin of Ivrea, who was king of Italy a bit more than 1,000 years ago.

Debian

First introduced in 1993 by Ian Murdock, Debian
was one of the first operating systems based on the Linux kernel. First
released as the "Debian Linux Release," Debian's name is a portmanteau
(a word created by combing two other words, such as "[mo]dulator
[dem]odulator"—so that's what "modem" means!). By combining the first
name of Murdock's then-girlfriend, Debra Lynn and his own name, Ian,
they formed "Debian."

Kubernetes

The open source system for automating deployment, scaling, and
management of containerized applications, also called "K8s," gets its
moniker from the Greek for "helmsman" or "pilot." Kubernetes traces its lineage to Google's Borg system and was originally codenamed "Project Seven," a reference to Star Trek Voyager's previously assimilated Borg, Seven of Nine. The seven spokes in Kubernetes' logo—a helmsman's wheel—are a visual reference to Seven.

openSUSE

openSUSE gets
its name from Germany. SUSE is an acronym for "Software und
System-Entwicklung" or "software and system development." The "open"
part was appended after Novell acquired SUSE in 2003 and when they
opened distribution development to the community in 2005.

PHP

PHP started as a
simple set of CGI binaries written in C for helping its creator, Rasmus
Lerdorf, maintain his personal homepage, thus the project was
abbreviated "PHP." This later became an acronym for what the project
became—a hypertext preprocessor—so "PHP: hypertext preprocessor" became
the new meaning of "PHP" (yes, a recursive backronym).

PostgreSQL

Originally just "postgres,"
PostgreSQL was created at the University of California-Berkeley by
Michael Stonebraker in 1986 as a follow-up to the "Ingres" database
system. Postgres was developed to break new ground in database concepts,
such as object-relational technologies. Its pronunciation causes a lot
of debate, as seen in this Reddit thread.

Python

When he began implementing the Python programming language, Guido van Rossum was a fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Van Rossum thought he needed a short name that was unique and slightly mysterious, so he settled on Python.

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton explains:
"Raspberry is a reference to a fruit-naming tradition in the old days
of microcomputers," such as Tangerine Computer Systems, Apricot
Computers, and Acorn. As the Raspberry Pi was intended to be a processor
that booted into a Python shell, "Py" was added, but changed to "Pi" in
reference to the mathematical constant.

Red Hat

Red Hat was
founded out of a sewing room in Connecticut and a bachelor pad in
Raleigh, N.C., by co-founders Bob Young and Marc Ewing. The "red hat"
refers to a red Cornell University lacrosse cap, which Ewing wore at
his job helping students in the computer lab at Carnegie Mellon.
Students were told: "If you need help, look for the guy in the red hat."

Ubuntu

Ubuntu's About
page explains the word's meaning: "Ubuntu is an ancient African word
meaning 'humanity to others.'" It also means "I am what I am because of
who we all are," and the operating system intends to bring "the spirit
of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software." The word can be
traced to the Nguni languages, part of the Bantu languages spoken in Southern African, and simply means "humanity."

Wikipedia

To get the answer to this one, let's turn to Wikipedia!
In 1995, Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham developed WikiWikiWeb, "the
simplest online database that could possibly work." The word "wiki" is
Hawaiian and means "quick" and "pedia" means, ummm, "pedia."
Acronyms, portmanteaus, pubs, foreign words—these are just some
examples of the etymology of open source labels. There are many others.
What other strange and alien words have you encountered in the open
source universe? Where do they come from? What do they mean? Let us know
in the comments section below.Thanks to Ben Nuttall, community manager for the Raspberry Pi
Foundation, for providing definitions for PHP, Python, and Raspberry Pi.